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A reporter’s fumbling has caused the phone to cut off and Dame Helen Mirren is not amused. The ice in her voice is palpable when she comes back on the line from Los Angeles to discuss her starring role in the reboot of the 1981 comedy, Arthur.

But Mirren is nothing if not a good sport and an apology melts the frost. By the time we start talking about her leading man, British bad-boy comic Russell Brand, she’s laughing out loud — especially when it’s mentioned that Brand recently told reporters he finds her “sexy” and “wants to snog” her.

“In my dreams is all I can say,” Mirren observes with a chuckle of the actor who also shared the screen with her in Julie Taymor’s version of The Tempest last year.

“He’s one of a kind,” she observes of Brand. “He has that combination of the amazing use of the English language, he’s always quoting Shakespeare and he has an incredible vocabulary but he’s physically funny, a long, thin person and he can do things with his legs.”

Brand plays Arthur, a lovable drunk, filthy rich and free of both pretension and ambition who is being pressured by his mother to marry a society powerhouse (Jennifer Garner) or lose his billions. Mirren is his iron-willed live-in nanny, Hobson — the role created as Hobson the butler by Shakespearean actor John Gielgud in the original Arthur with Oscar-winning results.

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As with Gielgud’s approach to the role, Mirren uses deadpan delivery for her many very funny lines in Arthur. In fact, she has some of the best zingers in the movie, often upstaging Brand, adding they often came up with lines on their own during shooting.

This may be her first comedy, but Mirren takes to the genre with the same flair she has brought to her dramatic work, including her Oscar-winning turn in The Queen and The Last Station, for which she was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for playing Leo Tolstoy histrionics-prone wife, Sophia.

But Mirren generously says Brand was the funny one on the set and she predicts the outtakes of Arthur will be just as entertaining as the movie. “The DVD is going to be fantastic. Russell is ... incredibly inventive and funny and can do wonderful things.”

She’d never met Brand before they first worked together, although she knew of him. The British papers were filled with stories of his run-ins with police in recent years and the now-sober comic’s well-known addictions to booze, heroin and sex.

“I knew about his stand-up work and he was a rather notorious character in London for various reasons,” said Mirren.

Was she worried about his past excesses making him difficult to work with?

“No, not really. I quite like people who walk on the wild side,” said Mirren, “I just don’t want them to destroy themselves. But I am not judgmental. Nowadays young people do the stuff they’ve always done and they get followed around by people with cameras. They used to be able to f--- up as young people do and then move on.”

As for Arthur, Mirren sees the movie not as a remake, but as a different film.

“I didn’t particularly love it,” she said of the original, which starred Dudley Moore, who was nominated for an Oscar as the movie’s leading man. “I could see how brilliant Dudley Moore was but I didn’t like the glorification of the drunk. I didn’t find it funny. The tragedy of it was the drinking impacted on everything and I didn’t like idea of the girl (Liza Minnelli was Moore’s love interest) being his caretaker.”

Mirren said while Brand’s Arthur has just as intimate relationship with the bottle, “he is at the point where he can do whatever he wants to do and he can be drawn back from the brink.”

As for Hobson making the gender switch from male butler to female nanny, Mirren pointed out no one should mistake the character as a stand-in for Arthur’s cold and calculating mother, Vivienne (played by Geraldine James).

“Hobson is not taking the place of his mother. Nannies always say (that) I am an employee. This woman has grown to love this boy who is now a man absolutely and she sees all the good side of his nature. I see her more as a really good friend, the only one who will tell you the truth about yourself.”

Mirren’s fans will get a chance to see more of her comic side April 9 when she hosts Saturday Night Live for the first time. Is she looking forward to it?

“I don’t know,” she said with a laugh. “Ask me after.”

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